{"id":7112,"date":"2015-11-14T00:05:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-14T08:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7112"},"modified":"2015-11-13T11:43:05","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T19:43:05","slug":"kingdom-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/11\/14\/kingdom-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingdom Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, \u201cThe kingdom of God doesn\u2019t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, \u2018Look here!\u2019 or, \u2018There it is!\u2019 And why? Because God\u2019s kingdom is already among you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe went on to say to his disciples, \u201cThe days are coming when you are going to be desperately homesick for just a glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won\u2019t see a thing. And they\u2019ll say to you, \u2018Look over there!\u2019 or, \u2018Look here!\u2019 Don\u2019t fall for any of that nonsense. The arrival of the Son of Man is not something you go out to see. He simply comes.<\/p>\n

\t \u201cYou know how the whole sky lights up from a single flash of lightning? That\u2019s how it will be on the Day of the Son of Man. But first it\u2019s necessary that he suffer many things and be turned down by the people of today. (Luke 17:20-25)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tPeople look for God in all the wrong places. When Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was at hand, he really meant it. He wasn\u2019t speaking metaphorically, he didn\u2019t mean that it was \u201csoon\u201d in the sense that for God a thousand years is like a day, so that \u201csoon\u201d could be a really, really long time as far as mere mortals were concerned. Jesus was very clear with the Pharisees: he told them that the kingdom of God had arrived. It was right here, right now.<\/p>\n

\tThe Pharisees and for that matter, Jesus\u2019 disciples and the bulk of the Jewish population thought that the kingdom of God was a physical kingdom. They believed that when the Messiah arrived, he would raise an army, defeat the Romans, and sit down on David\u2019s throne in Jerusalem, replacing Caesar, and making the world a perfectly wonderful place. They thought they would all live happily ever after\u2014well, except for the sinners\u2014and the Pharisees had a list of who those were\u2014who would all die miserably.<\/p>\n

\tJesus explained that they all\u2014from the Pharisees to his own disciples\u2014simply didn\u2019t get it. <\/p>\n

\tGod\u2019s kingdom wouldn\u2019t be like the Roman Empire at all. The kingdom of God existed in the hearts and minds of those who believed the Gospel. It wasn\u2019t physical, even though it did have real world implications that would be as obvious as a flash of lightning.<\/p>\n

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Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, \u201cThe kingdom of God doesn\u2019t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, \u2018Look here!\u2019 or, \u2018There it is!\u2019 And why? Because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7114,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112\/revisions\/7114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}